Monday, July 4, 2016

Let's Review: X-Men: Apocalypse

Let’s not lie to ourselves and say we don’t like the
X-Men. Marvel sure seems to have a beef against them. They’ve been trying to
underplay their uncanny band of mutants left and right. I don’t know if the
rest of you have been paying attention but the recent storylines being
published ranges from finding a new cure for mutants to a virus that is killing
them as well as making them infertile. At the same time Marvel has been
up-playing Inhumans as the new mutant across most of their mediums.
Unfortunately, they have a very hard pill to as they are slowly coming to
realize no one really cares about the Inhumans hence the reason why no one
really knows who they are, whereas the X-Men have been one of your strongest
brands for over 50 years. I know Marvel wants the rights back from Fox but that
doesn’t mean they should try to kill of one of their best franchises. Whereas
the media blackout from Marvel regarding the Fantastic Four might’ve worked
(the film being bad didn’t hurt either), the X-Men franchise is still beating
strong and with a wealth of wonderful storylines to adapt will keep doing so
for quite some time. So with that rant out of the way, how did I feel about the
new film?

The
Negative

This film draaaaaaaaaaaaged really badly. The movie is
about 2 and a half hours long and it just feels like it. I think it was a
problem with the pacing as I felt like I was watching the same standing around
discussing scene over and over again just is various different locations. The main
villain himself didn’t do much for the vast majority of the flick but that made
sense because he was an unstoppable powerhouse who whenever he actually did
something it was to a massive scale and terrifying. Apocalypse should have won
but for film convenience he regularly sat back and did very little. I feel like
the film would have been better if we had one massive exposition scene and then
just got on with things quickly.

The
Positive

I just can’t stay mad at this film. As an X-Men fan this
movie was filled to the brim with wonderful nods to the fans. I fear these
things will mean very little to the average film-goers but for me it truly made
this film fantastic. Little things like getting to see Cyclops wear his iconic
blue uniform for the first time, or finally getting a proper adaptation of
Wolverine’s Weapon X harness made the kid-nerd in my explode in excitement. The
very fact that we got an adaptation of the Apocalypse storyline in film alone
made me extremely excited. Superhero films for the longest time only wanted to
be taken seriously and attempted to only adapt some of the more feasible
storylines or even worse change things so that they could be taken more
serious. I have been overjoyed with the fact that superhero films are now
adapting some of the weirder sides of their comic book counterparts and even
better the audiences are loving it. Something like this or Guardians of the
Galaxy would never have seen the light of day during the early 2000’s when
superhero films were just starting to take off again.

In
Conclusion

It does my nerdy heart good to see films embrace
superheroes and comic books for what they are, a wild ride into the fantastic.
I’m very curious to see what will become of the X-Men franchise now that the
prequel trilogy is over. Sure the series has had a few flops but if they keep
up this momentum, I’m certain that the X-Men franchise will never die, despite
how Marvel wishes to break it before getting it back under their thumb. 4.5 out
of 5.